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“A $10 cover for a 10-cent show.” — Jeff Mazzuca, a junior elementary education major

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done some pretty pointless things with my life.

I remember this one time, a bitter-cold December night about five years ago, when my best friend Steve and I heated up three frozen pizzas, drove to our friend’s house and wedged the pizzas into his mailbox. Thinking about it right now, I can’t imagine what possessed me to do something so stupid, but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

And maybe it was. Say what you will about my wanton act of vandalism, but just hanging out that night proved to be one of the best times Steve and I ever had. The redeeming thing about those kinds of moments, (and you know you’ve had ’em,) is that we can usually isolate something within that moment that made it worth while, something that turned the trivial into the memorable.

Last Saturday I agreed to go see midget-wrestling at Starbusters, and for five days now have been beating my head against the wall trying to find something redeeming to say about that night.

To quote U2, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

After waiting in line for about half an hour and paying a $10 cover charge that subsequently robbed me of my beer money, I found my friend Jeff near the

entrance saying goodbye to his friends. The poor guy was in there for two hours by the time I finally arrived.

From my little corner of the bar, broken glass littered the ground, and pinatas overhead were rigged to explode pages of torn porno mags on the audience like confetti. God help me, some poor fool took the time to tear up hundreds of pages of perfectly good pornography into confetti.

Broke, sober and waiting for something & anything to happen, I was relieved when the diminutive announcer finally got into the ring. Still not sure what he was yelling about, but it had something to do with how the length of his genitalia more than made up for his lack of height.

The announcer trash-talked the audience for a few minutes before bringing on the first match, a bout between two guys who weren’t even midgets! The first contestant was the kind of tough guy you see in lame ’80s high school movies, stinking of phony machismo while the second, a skinny, fragile thing clad in a pink-tassled shirt, was the kind of sacrificial lamb you knew was chosen just to get his ass handed back to him in front of a live audience. It took a few body slams and slaps to the chest to end the match in the bruiser’s favor, but from the looks of it, no one cared either way. Can’t imagine why …

Once the fight had ended, the stage was cleared and normalcy restored. In the ensuing moment of clarity, a frightening thought occurred to me: Would this whole night be a bust? Have I … wasted my time? But then, at the stroke of midnight, it happened.

The Deathmatch.

One by one, TO, Puppet and the Pissed Off Dwarf entered the ring, bringing in weapons like garbage cans, kendo sticks and steel chairs. Three had entered the ring, but one would walk away victorious. The music, an angry rock beat, swelled, and for a brief moment, I almost forgot my doubts. Almost.

Sports entertainment events, like midget wrestling, simultaneously imply two things: One, that there is a certain degree of athleticism involved. And two, that this is entertainment; we’re supposed to kick back and have some fun. The circus side show I went to last Saturday & it wasn’t athletic, and it sure as hell wasn’t fun. It was an exercise in killing brain cells that I willingly subjected myself to. This was the kind of bawdy spectacle that left me wondering who was the bigger fool, the midgets for putting on such a poor excuse for a show, or me for paying $10 to see it.

Midget wrestling seemed like a good idea, as those silly, pointless moments tend to. Sadly, though, I realize that some things just aren’t worth my time, or beer money.